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Tomorrow’s my last day as a substitute. I’ve learned a lot and had a good time for the most part. But dude, I am so exhausted. I don’t know how full-time teachers do it. (I guess it helps to not be almost 7 months pregnant.) Today the guys who usually drive me crazy just cracked me up. They spent a good five minutes testing my knowledge of modern musicians, mostly R&B, I suspect. (We had free time after the lesson today, so it’s not like they were interrupting anything important.) They finally said, “Auntie, what music do you listen to?” I said, “Musicians you’ve never heard of, like Beethoven and Bach.” They just laughed. Actually, I hardly listen to any classical music (in the generic sense of the term), but I’m sure they’ve never heard of most of my favourite singers, seeing as they’re primarily Christian. They were very glad to know that I listen to Bob Marley and that I’ve at least heard of Elvis and Michael Jackson. Ha. Poor deprived souls. They don’t know what they’re missing.
David started work at the teaching hospital this week. He’s enjoying it so far, as the workload is quite a bit less than that of Evangel. But he’s on call tonight, and he barely made it home for a quick supper (20 minutes) before returning. I’d gotten so spoiled with him working here, since he could sleep at home until he was called and return after he finished seeing the patient. Now he’ll be gone all night when he’s on call, and I’ll only see him after work the next day. *sigh* I have to remind myself that this is normal for a doctor’s family.
We moved our furniture this past Saturday–at least, most of it. We were a bit surprised to discover that the house had been flooded when a maintenance man accidentally left the taps on. Oops! It can happen easily, considering the water goes on and off a lot. Most of the house had about a half-inch of water, but the master bedroom was under a good 2 inches. Somehow, though, the guard David paid to clean it up managed to get almost all the water out in just a few short hours. Amazing! So on Sunday we were able to move all our furniture from the pile in the living room into the various rooms. The place actually looks like a home now instead of just a shell. We’re hoping to move in this Saturday. (Lord, help us!) In other words, I’ll spend all day Friday packing. Phew.
This is life!
I got hired this week to substitute teach for two-and-a-half weeks. I’m thankful it’s only a part-time subbing job–two classes a day–but it still seems to add a lot of work. I’m teaching 10th grade English class, periods 4 and 7, and I’m supposed to be teaching them to write essays in the SAT style. Considering they didn’t have essays on the SAT when I took it, this is a bit challenging.
It’s been all right so far. Some of the kids are rambunctious and talk back. Others are quiet and complacent. It’s a good mix–about 25 students in all, including two siblings of my classmates. Now that’s interesting.
My greatest hurdle so far has been trying to get across to the students the importance of vocabulary words. They memorise ten words a week for a quiz each Friday, but they don’t remember them or their meanings. What’s the point of learning them? I admit: I was bad at learning vocab words, too. Considering my parentage and my English degree, I have quite a limited vocabulary. I know I need to improve it… And maybe teaching is giving me the extra push I need. But how can I express the importance of words to my students? In less than three weeks?
Well, anyway, I could sure use prayer!
Wednesday we celebrated Joshua’s 34th birthday.
“Who is Joshua?” I’m so glad you asked!
Joshua is an old family friend of ours we first met 16 years ago upon our arrival in Jos. He is a charismatic young man with brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta). Because his bones are brittle and break easily, he has never been able to walk (as far as I know) and is transported around town in a wagon. Although he’s faced tremendous challenges, he has spunk and an optimistic spirit. He coaches a football (soccer) team, loves to preach, and is currently working on the script for a video. We thank God for Joshua’s 34 years and how He has blessed Joshua in spite of physical suffering.
Joshua had said that he’d hoped his party could be Saturday because a relative from out of town couldn’t come on Wednesday. But we’d already planned on coming to visit him Wednesday, since that was his actual birthday, so we hoped we could avoid the crowd by keeping with our original plan. Mom baked and decorated two huge birthday cakes, and we put together our small gifts and birthday cards. We piled into my parents’ car (I knew my car would never survive the journey) and drove out to Joshua’s house, where he lives with (and is taken care of by) his mother, Esther.
The road to Joshua’s house is absolutely wretched. At one point, I asked if I could get out and walk instead. I’m terrified of bad roads, and this one was truly the pits. One place was impassable, so we had to take an alternate route (which proved better anyway). When we arrived, we discovered–to our great surprise–a small crowd gathered under two canopies. There was a sound system set up–although no power to run it–and maybe a hundred plastic chairs beneath the canopies. We greeted Joshua, delivered the cakes, and sat down outside. Soon, Auntie Esther came and insisted we sit inside the house.
The walls of the living room are plastered with football posters and articles. There’s no way to mistake Joshua’s favourite sport (one he’s never played himself). It was hot and stuffy inside, and after a little while, we went back outside. Clouds were gathering, promising an imminent rainstorm. After awhile, a man stood up next to Joshua’s wagon and welcomed everyone. He then asked my husband to pray to begin the party. David did so (in Hausa). Then the man asked my dad to give an “exhortation” to those congregated. Dad spoke about Joshua’s thanksgiving attitude and how we should also rejoice in all circumstances. Then the man asked for a few people to sing Joshua a special number. One person led us in “Happy Birthday,” but the rest of us were rescued due to lack of time, as the storm clouds were descending. We sang Joshua “Happy Birthday” again, and Mom posed to cut the cake with Joshua for a photo.
Afterwards was a quick photo shoot–oh and did I mention there was a cameraman from the local Nigerian TV network?
…and then it began to rain, softly at first. It was also getting dark, even though it was only about 5:30, and my family all agreed we should leave before the rain really began. Not only did we not want to get wet, but the road would become impossible in the rain. So we piled back into my parents’ car, giving Auntie Esther our apologies. (She kept insisting we stay for the food, but we emphatically told her we weren’t offended that we were missing the refreshments.)
And it poured as soon as we reached the main road; we’d traveled the dirt road just in time!
So we did what we had gone to do: greet Joshua and wish him “many happy returns” on his birthday, and deliver his birthday cakes. He was happy. His mother was happy. And we were happy not to remain for the whole program. But I do wish we’d gotten to taste the birthday cake!
We took a family trip to the zoo on Saturday.
The Jos Zoo is right across a small street from the museum, where there was a wedding taking place. So the zoo was crowded with visitors, and it was hard for us to find a place to park. But we found a place and entered the zoo. The entrance fee is only N50 for adults (N20 for kids), which is less than 50 cents. But they charge N200 if you want to bring in a camera. Fortunately, we’ve done this enough times to have known that ahead of time, and I took in my camera.
When we first go in, we pass through a turnstile and then walk across a narrow plank bridge that always makes me nervous. First we see the crocodile, then the tortoises. Then the baboons, chimps, lots of other monkeys… On the left are some ostriches and then a pen for gazelles. But we don’t see any gazelles–just a donkey walking behind the gazelle pen. We pass the lion cage on our right, but we can’t see the lion well. He’s sunbathing on top of a heap of rocks, so all we can see is his mane. There’s a walled pit where the boa constrictor lives. He’s curled up on top of his thatched hut, fast asleep, and a yellow-and-black lizard is relaxing on top.
In the very back of the zoo, there are a few cages with birds, including a caged area with peafowl and its neighbouring swans. (David says they’re a kind of duck, but there’s no sign, and they look like swans to us.) There’s a break in a fence, and we see a horse (Hausa, doki)munching grass on the other side. Dad sees a camel way back, but I can’t see him. While we’re snapping the horse, a roaming donkey comes up to us and sniffs the horse. Luke’s terrified of the donkey, and when Dad picks him up so I can get a photo, Luke screams to be let down again–which makes the rest of us laugh. It’s a donkey, for heaven’s sake! (Hausa, jaki)
In other other cages are lots of other monkeys and birds. We see another donkey in a pen. A young girl follows us around with a bucket on her head. In the bucket are some bean cakes; Dad thinks they’re like Nigerian tofu. We don’t want to eat any (not sure of the sanitation anyway), but Dad buys one to feed the monkeys. One of the chimps even does some “dances” for us after we give him the food. Our last stop before we leave is the hyena enclosure. We can see one hyena only. Luke says he doesn’t want to get too close, and Dad remarks on the cage wire. The squares are a good 5″ by 5″, quite large enough for a hyena paw to get through!
All in all, it’s a fun trip, with lots of pictures I put on Flickr. Not quite like my trip to the San Diego Zoo a year-and-a-half ago, but, hey, this is Africa!
Blogger is finally letting me post again. Thank God! I’ve enjoyed WordPress, but honestly, Blogger is just easier to use for someone who’s inexperienced with html. However, I’ll be maintaining both blogs for those of you who are just too tired to switch back and forth. They will be as similar as I can make them. The only big difference will be that I’ll go back to using my Baby Trek blog at http://babynege.blogspot.com for posts about Baby Kes in addition to A Path Through Tall Grass. Just FYI. So you can choose which to keep tabs on now. 
Well, I finally gave up on Blogger, I’m sorry to say. They haven’t let me post in two weeks, and after sending two messages without receiving any reply, I’ve decided to try again, start fresh.
So this is my new site, my new blog. Welcome, and thanks for sticking with me!
